


and the sky was full of teeth

by Qzil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Animal Death, F/M, Human Castiel, Human Meg, Mercy Killing, Present Tense, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qzil/pseuds/Qzil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Closing the gates of Hell does not kill Sam Winchester. Instead, it unleashes a deadly virus that causes the dead to rise. Trapped states away from the safety of the bunker, a newly-human Meg and Castiel try to make it back to Kansas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the sky was full of teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msdoomandgloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msdoomandgloom/gifts).



> Msdoomandgloom pulled me into The Walking Dead and this happened. There is some general grossness in this fic, such as eating rats and maggots (as one would do in order to survive, I imagine).

“Which way, do you think?” Castiel asks. Meg wants to scream in frustration at the absurdity of his question, because it isn’t like she memorized the map, for Lucifer’s sake, but wisely keeps quiet. She knows he feels bad enough about losing the map as it is.

“Town might be crawling with zombies,” she points out, squinting at the sign. “But the woods probably aren’t safe, either.”

“Safer than the town, maybe,” he says.

“It’s getting dark soon,” Meg says. “We should find somewhere to sleep. Belt ourselves into a tree for the night.”

“No time for hunting?”  Castiel asks. It sounds almost like a whine, but Meg ignores that, too. This body (her body now, she reminds herself, damn Sam Winchester to Hell) doesn’t know how to be hungry, doesn’t know how to go days with only the minimal amount of food to keep it alive. But her mind does, half-memories of her original human life simmering just under the surface, so she ignores her growling belly and Castiel’s hunger and heads for the trees.

She will feed him tomorrow, she promises. She will feed them both tomorrow, and then they will keep going, keep moving until they reach Kansas. Then they will find the bunker, find the boys, and find safety and food and shelter.

She will find Sam Winchester and wring his neck for getting her into this mess.

.

It had started simply enough. A rescue from Crowley, translating the demon tablet, and a lot of shouting, arguing, and slammed doors. Then it had gotten more complicated, with a church and blood and sobbing and Dean screaming at Sam to stop, that closing the gates of Hell would kill him as well as all the other demons.

Sam had ignored Dean, slapped his bloody hand over her mouth, and turned her human. He had given her a shiny, brandy-new human soul, a fresh start, a clean slate. He had banished all of the demons on Earth to Hell, never to claw their way out again, stuck in an endless dance of torturing each other.

Then it had all gone to shit.

The demons were gone, but the virus had replaced it. The newly-dead rose in droves, attacking and creating more and more zombies. It had started small at first, and Sam and Dean had suspected some sort of new monster. Meg, newly human and itching for a fight, had volunteered to check it out, along with a newly-human Castiel, who had been tricked by Metatron. Both of them were concerned about why the angels hadn’t come after him yet.

Then the world had gone to Hell, and Meg had understood. Metatron wasn’t a big enough douchebag to leave his brothers and sisters on Earth to be slaughtered, and the angels had promptly decamped to Heaven, leaving humanity to deal with the undead menace on its own, and Castiel and Meg stuck states away from the bunker when the world fell apart.

.

They travel, never staying in the same place for more than a week. There are no other survivors, at least none that they meet, and miles between each town. They try to stick to forests, and when there are no trees to be found, try to stay as high up as possible. They sleep in abandoned barns and houses, take what food they can carry and catch what they can. Castiel is helpless at hunting and at pretty much everything else when it comes to being human and dealing with a human body’s needs. He can fight, at least. He relies mostly on Jimmy Novak’s muscle memory, so he can drive a car and do some cooking, but Jimmy Novak had been a salesman, and had never killed or skinned an animal or started a fire with nothing but sticks and string.

But Meg knows how to find food, and how to skin it and cook it. She’s old, after all. Not as old as him, nowhere near it, but she is old enough to know how these things work. She’s walked the Earth for a long time, blending in with humans on her father’s missions or just causing general mischief, and has picked up a few things along the way.

Occasionally, they find a car and drive it until it runs out of gas. Then they walk.

.

“Do you think Sam and Dean made it?” Castiel asks one day. Meg keeps her hatchet out, ready for any zombies that might stray into their path. Guns attract them, she knows, a fact she and Castiel learned through a lot of trial and error, and they need to conserve ammo, anyway. But her guns are tempting, almost too tempting.

“Walther PPK,” she’d told Castiel. “James Bond gun. Always wanted one.”

“James Bond?” he’d said, and Meg had laughed, back when she thought that the zombies would be an easy threat to eliminate, and had promised him that she would educate him on good movies.

“If they were smart and stayed in the bunker,” Meg answers. She glances behind her and sees Castiel, his machete dangling casually from his hand as he walks.

“Winter’s coming,” Castiel says, clearly changing the subject. “Do you think _we’ll_ make it?”

“We have to,” Meg tells him, her voice firm. “This is _not_ how we die.”

.

Winter comes early, the first few snowflakes drifting down in fat, fluffy bunches. They find an abandoned farmhouse and hole up for the night, shivering under heaps of blankets pilfered from the closets, the doors and windows boarded shut.

Castiel presses close to her, teeth chattering and complaining about the cold. For the first time in as long as she can remember, Meg misses the scalding warmth of Hell.

“What are we going to do?” Castiel asks her. “We can’t survive like this.”

“We’ll manage,” Meg assures him. “A demon and an angel, together at the end.  It’s like a bad joke.”

“I don’t find this situation funny,” Castiel says. “I find it worrying.”

“Go to sleep,” Meg orders. Castiel wraps his arms around her and obeys, giving into his body’s exhaustion. Meg follows him a moment after.

She wakes up in the morning to a gun in her face and laughs.

.

“How long have you two been moving?” asks the leader of the group, a squirrely, dark-haired man named Brandan.

“Since it started,” Meg answers. Brandan’s companion, a dark-skinned woman named Melissa who wears her hair in braids, whistles when she hears, clearly impressed.

“Eighteen months on your own?” Brandan presses. He clearly doesn’t believe them. “Where’s the rest of your group? Scavenging?”

“Kansas,” Castiel answers promptly. Meg kicks him in the shin to shut him up, the only movement she can make with her hands tied behind her back and her shoulders pressed against the uncomfortable dining room chair.

“We don’t have a group,” Meg corrects. “We’re _going_ to Kansas.”

“Your girlfriend do all the talking for you?” Brandan asks Castiel. Meg rolls her eyes.

“Yes,” Castiel says, blunt as always. “Her people skills are far less rusty than my own.”

“I think they’re telling the truth,” Melissa says, putting a hand on Brandan’s arm. “They need help.”

“We’re just trying to survive,” Meg says evenly. Brandan had taken their guns, ammo, and all of their knives, so they’re essentially defenseless.

“We should leave them tied down and take their shit and run,” Brandan says.

“Take it,” Meg says as she twists her hands around. Their captors hadn’t had any rope, so they’d simply bound Meg’s hands with the phone cord and Castiel’s with some duct tape, probably thinking he was the more dangerous one, since he was male and bigger than her.

Which, Meg knows, is a pretty big mistake.

“Take it,” she repeats, kicking Castiel again when he tries to protest. “Take it all.”

Brandan narrows his eyes at her, and Melissa looks confused.

“By the way,” Meg says as she frees her hands. “Your knots are shit.”

She launches herself at Brandan before he can say anything, knocking the gun out of his hands and tackling him to the floor. They roll on the floor in a screeching tangle of limbs, both Melissa and Castiel yelling for them to stop, both of them scrabbling for the gun.

Meg gets it first, straddles Brandan’s waist, and holds his handgun up over her head like a club.

“When you get to Hell, tell my old pal Crowley ‘hi’ for me,” she says, and brings the gun down on Brandan’s head again and again until he stops twitching under her. Melissa screams, no doubt attracting zombies, and sinks to her knees in horror.

Meg turns the gun on her and gestures to the knives. “Cut Castiel free. Then back away with your hands up. Cas, get our shit. We’re leaving.”

Melissa obeys, weeping all the while. When Castiel has their gear, Meg takes her own gun from him and hands Brandan’s to Melissa.

“Get out of here and go back to your group,” she says, waving her gun in the direction of the kitchen. “Git.”

Melissa hesitates, almost as if she’s going to ask Meg and Castiel if she can come with them instead. Meg pulls the hammer back.

Melissa runs.

.

“See, this is why we avoid people,” Meg says later, stuck in a tree with Castiel as they wait for the dead to get bored and move on from them. She reaches into her pack for one of their precious saltine crackers and hands one to him.

“There have to be good people left,” Castiel argues.

“Even if there are, they’d be suspicious of us,” Meg tells him. “Stick to their groups. Safer for it to be just us.”

“Safety in numbers,” Castiel insists.

Meg shakes her head. “No. We don’t need anyone else, except maybe Sam and Dean. But until we get to Kansas, we don’t need anyone else. I’m gonna take care of you, just like in the hospital.”

Castiel doesn’t argue further with her. “How many bullets left?”

“Not many,” Meg admits. “There’s only two left in the Walther. I’m saving them.”

“For what?” Castiel asks.

“Us,” Meg says. “In case we’re bit.”

Castiel shivers.

.

As luck would have it, they find an abandoned hospital.

“There probably aren’t any meds left,” Meg says. “And it’s probably overrun.”

“We’d see zombies outside if it was,” Castiel argues. “Maybe all the dead are locked up, or have moved on.”

“Other survivors, you think?”

Castiel shrugs. “It’s too cold out to take our chances. And night is coming.”

Meg grumbles because she knows he’s right. Exposed as they are to the cold and the dead, they could use the shelter.

“There could be some food in there,” she says cheerfully. That’d be nice.” They’d run out of crackers two days ago. Thankfully, there’s plenty of snow to boil for water.

“If the meds were cleared out, the cafeteria probably was, too,” Castiel says. Meg shakes her head.

“Wasn’t talking about canned stuff.”

.

Meg decides she loves rats.

They’re little monsters, yeah, and have probably survived by gnawing on the dead (the real dead, not the living dead) that litter the hospital floor. They’re hardy things, rats, living almost everywhere and eating almost anything, and the ones here are fat and furry and easy to catch.

Castiel eyes their little corpses with suspicion, but Meg only smiles as she skins them.

“They’re not so bad,” Meg promises. “Little fuckers spread disease and they’ll eat you alive, but they’re not so bad. How many do you think I’d need to make a coat?”

Castiel shrugs. “A lot.”

“Maybe gloves, then,” she says, and takes the meat off of the fire. “Here, eat it.”

“This is what humanity is reduced to,” Castiel sighs. “Eating vermin.”

“Hey, these vermin mean life for us,” Meg says. “Fresh meat is hard to come by nowadays. Eat up, Clarence. You’re far too skinny.”

.

They sleep uneasily, Meg taking the first watch. But when the morning comes and they are still alive, she smiles for the first time in weeks. She starts the morning by killing and cooking two of the rats she’d strung up the night before, and for the first time in over a year, they start the day with full bellies.

“Let’s explore,” Meg suggests. “See if we can find anything. Something other looters missed, or some tools.”

“Alright,” Castiel agrees. Meg nods, hefts her pack onto her shoulders, and leads the way. The two of them walk quietly, flashlights ready, but mercifully find no zombies. What they do find is a set of corpses, still fresh, with rats swarming all over them and maggots wiggling in their guts.

Meg takes a jar off the shelf and begins to carefully scoop the maggots in.

“Snack size protein,” she says while Castiel doubles over and pukes from the smell. “They’re pretty fresh, but it looks like someone put them out of their misery. There are holes in their head. Hope the third isn’t here.”

Castiel pulls the collar of his shirt over his mouth and nose. When he talks, his voice is muffled. “I’m not eating maggots.”

“Yeah, you are,” Meg says casually. “Bugs are good for you. Help me search their stuff.”

The dead people don’t have much. Some canned vegetables, which are a blessing, some knives rusted beyond use, and a few filthy t-shirts that Meg takes to clean and rip up for bandages or menstrual pads.

“Can you use this?” Castiel asks. Meg turns around and sees Castiel holding a _beautiful_ bow and full quiver of arrows.

Meg takes it from him and gently strokes the wood. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I can catch us something better than rats with this, if we find anything bigger. You know how to use one?”

Castiel takes the bow back from her. “I think so.”

.

They hunt rats. Meg teaches Castiel how to skin them and gut them, and soon he’s as good at it as she is. Surprisingly, Castiel knows how to treat the hides, and soon enough they’ve got a couple of hospital cups and bowls and bedpans cooking some cup-of-brains to use for tanning. There are all sorts of useful things in supply closets that people have left behind--nails, boards, cups and spoons and bowls and forks. For the first time in a long time, the two of them sleep on real, honest-to-God mattresses.

“We could winter here,” Castiel suggests. “There are a lot of rats to eat, and I’m sure we could find some greens if we went out.”

Meg glances up from where she’s rubbing the brain mixture onto one of the pelts and shakes her head. “We’re still pretty exposed here. Too hard to close off, and too hard to defend. We’re lucky that the dead haven’t come yet, or other people. Probably because we’re quiet.” She returns to rubbing the brain mixture on. “Think I can maybe make a vest or shirt outta these, though. Plenty of suture kits left here.”

They work in silence for a few minutes, Meg determined to get a first coat on all their pelts. Castiel walks around their small fire to crouch next to her and lays a gentle hand on her arm. She stops working and turns to look at him.

“What?”

“If I get bit, shoot me,” he says softly. “Don’t let me become one of those things.”

Meg leans up and kisses him, careful to keep her filthy hands away from his clothes. They just got them clean, after all. He looks slightly stunned when she pulls away, so Meg gives him another kiss. It’s more chaste than anything, but Meg knows that they cannot afford to do anything too rash. She’s human now, and fully able to get pregnant, and that is the last thing they need. Beyond that, they don’t have time for anything else, at least not right  now. There are chores to do.

“If I get bit,” she says, “do the same for me. Promise?”

“I promise,” he says, and gives her a quick kiss in return. Meg nods.

“Alright. Go finish cleaning your rat.”

.

“I still say we should winter here,” Castiel says. “Plenty of meat, and we could maybe fortify it.”

“I don’t think so,” Meg says as she finishes packing up. She brings a scant few things from the hospital. Some cups, some bowls, a kettle they found in the cafeteria. They need to travel light. She tugs on her brand new rat skin gloves and flexes her fingers. They’re not perfectly made, but it turns out Castiel is better at sewing than she is, so they’re more than passable.

Castiel pulls on his own pair. They’ve got new socks, too, fur side in for warmth, and a vest that Castiel insisted Meg take. It hangs off her body like a dirty black tarp, but does add extra warmth.

She reaches out and fingers the ends of Castiel’s hair. Its grown longer in the last few months, curling over his ears in matted bunches, but Meg supposes that is a good thing. It helps keep his head and ears warm. His beard, too, has grown long and shaggy.

Meg pats his cheek. “We’ll be fine. We’ve got plenty of rat jerky to last us, and lots of maggots. All we need to do is find some greens. Don’t want scurvy.”

Castiel winces, puts his fingers in his mouth, and wiggles the offending tooth. “I’ve a loose one, anyway.”

“Well, try not to lose anymore,” Meg says. “But if you do, ask the Tooth Fairy for something more useful than a dollar. Some more ammo, maybe, or a new map to replace the one you dropped and lost.”

His face flames at that, and Meg sighs. She doesn’t think he’ll ever get over that bit of idiocy.

“Let’s go,” she says, hefting the bow up over her shoulder. “We might find something further on. Something easier to fortify.”

.

In the end, after walking for nearly three days, gnawing on rat jerky that is nearly frozen solid and sipping water they keep warm by tucking close to their bodies under their layers of clothes, they find an abandoned gas station. An old, faded sign reading _NO GAS_ in big block letters still hangs crookedly from one of the pumps. Trash litters the parking lot, and all the windows of the little store are broken. It’s probably been looted completely, but it is somewhere to sleep.

“There might be someone in there,” Castiel says.

“If there were, they’d have boarded up the windows,” Meg points out. “C’mon, I betcha it’s better than it looks.”

It isn’t, really.  There’s trash and broken glass all over the floor. But it is free of the dead. Meg wonders if zombies freeze during the winter months, if traveling now, while the snow is falling, is the safest. But she does not know for sure, and is not willing to risk dying of hypothermia or exposure.

Once inside, Meg hops over the counter in hopes of finding something, anything salvageable. She finds two packs of stale cigarettes, a pack of matches, and a wire basket that was probably used to hang fruit.

“We got something to grill on,” she says cheerfully. Castiel rolls his eyes at her, lifts his machete above his head, and drives it into a rat.

“We got dinner,” he says, his tone just as cheerful. Meg nearly laughs when he hands the rat to her like it’s some precious thing. Rats are better than diamonds, these days. Rats you can eat.

Meg continues exploring the store and finds two neglected cans of cat food and, surprisingly, a bag of kibble that hasn’t been opened yet. There’s enough trash scattered about to make a decent, if smelly, fire that has to be constantly watched.

Castiel has the rat skinned and cleaned in record time. But they can’t cook and eat, not yet. They use what little daylight is left to reinforce the windows and door. There’s a steel gate that the owner decided not to employ before fleeing or dying that closes over the whole front end, but Meg checks the back, anyway, just to be sure, and is rewarded by a legless corpse in the bathroom, its jaw snapping open when it sees her.

She dispatches it with a quick blow to the head, drags it through the backdoor, and leaves it on the little porch where employees no doubt too smoke breaks. When that’s finished, she and Castiel drag as many of the metal shelving units as they can back there and create a makeshift barricade.

“It’ll do, for now,” Meg says when they’re finished. “Let’s eat.”

Castiel cooks the rat, and afterward they munch on kibble. The world is still, quiet. Meg lies down on the floor with her rat vest curled up under her head as a pillow, and watches the fire.

“You know,” she says, “after what happened to Lucifer, I never thought I’d live long enough to see it.”

“See what?” Castiel asks.

“The end,” Meg says casually. “I mean, I’m old. Not as old as you, but I am really fucking old. I’ve been around for a long time, Clarence, and I never thought I’d live to see something like this. Not after Lucifer died, at least. It must be even weirder for you. You were around for the start of humanity. Now you’re around for the end of it.”

“I do find it…strange,” Castiel admits.

“And all I can think about is the little things,” Meg continues, acting as if he hasn’t spoken. “Shit like flower language and how to make beef wellington and tapestry making and how to shoe a horse. Useless crap. Useless crap I picked up by being around stupid humans.”

Meg eats another piece of kibble and sighs. Castiel feeds the fire.

“And we’re gonna die,” Meg says quietly. It is the first time the thought has really crossed her mind, the fact that she is no longer practically invincible. Almost absently, she wonders how other supernatural creatures are faring, the wendigoes and kitsunes and vampires and werewolves, who now have to compete with zombies for their food source.

“All things die,” Castiel says. “Even angels, even demons.”

“The funny thing is, if I were still a demon, I would think this was a lot of fun,” Meg tells him. “Humans acting like ants…scurrying around, battling each other for food and shelter. Crappy food and shelter. For rats and raincoats and bags of fucking dog food. This would’ve been like a trip to Disneyland.”

“But you’re not a demon anymore,” Castiel points out. “So how does it make you feel?”

“Weak,” Meg says. “Everything about this body makes me feel weak. That it has to piss and shit. That it bleeds between the legs. That it needs food and water and sleep. I remember almost nothing from my human life, Castiel. I was born in Hell. I feel weak. I feel lesser.”

“Angels aren’t supposed to feel emotion,” Castiel tells her. “But I’m not an angel anymore. And you’re right, the bodily functions…but there is something pure in it, I think. Humanity.”

“What’s that?” Meg asks.

A small smile blooms on Castiel’s face. “Free will. Choice.”

“Shitload of good it does us here,” Meg says.

“It is still nice to think about, I think,” Castiel insists.

“It isn’t going to do a lot of good at the end of the world,” Meg argues. “And it is the end, really. You saw those things all summer. Dead bodies bloat and explode in the heat, or rot. They rot quick. Bacteria starts eating you from the moment you die. And animals…crows and bugs and rats and foxes. But animals don’t go near the dead. If they were really just corpses that walked around, this whole thing would’ve been over inside of a week. I bet they don’t freeze, either. There’s something supernatural that keeps them upright and walking. Remember that one zed we killed? His stomach was burst open, human flesh leaking everywhere because he was so full, and he still kept eating that guy. This is it. Over and done with.”

“You don’t know that,” Castiel says quietly.

Meg pops another piece of kibble in her mouth. “Yeah, Clarence, I do.”

.

She goes scavenging the next day, finds good wood for a fire and a rabbit for her troubles. On the way back, she bags a squirrel and smiles. She’s gotten rather sick of rat. Castiel has, too, judging by the delighted look that spreads over his face when she hands him her catch.

“So, I think I have an idea of what to do,” Meg says while they eat. “Find someplace to really hole up once the weather breaks. A house. Somewhere sturdy. We’ll need a dry moat. We could lace it with spikes, or not. But the dead’ll walk right into it, and they’ll be easy pickings. Find somewhere wooded and we could hunt. We could maybe garden, if we can find stuff to grow. But it’s all just staving off the inevitable. You know that and I know that.”

“What about finding Sam and Dean?” Castiel asks.

“I don’t think we’ll get that far without dying,” she says. “And I said I’d look after you. That involves making sure you don’t die. We gotta find somewhere with a well, too, or a pump. Otherwise we’ll die of thirst before anything.”

“We need to get to Sam and Dean,” Castiel insists.

Meg sighs and looks outside, where it’s just beginning to snow again. The flakes are big, fluffy, and gray, all of the ash in the atmosphere from dead bodies and cities burning falling back down onto them.

“You’re gonna get us both killed, Castiel,” Meg says. “But if that’s what you want.”

“It is,” he says. “We should be together. All five of us. Kevin included.”

Meg sighs again. “We’ll stay here a few more days before we head out. Plus, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“A bigger surprise than the rabbit?” Castiel asks. “What is it?”

Meg smiles and holds up a box of condoms. “Found them when I re-searched behind the counter. Guess safe sex isn’t the biggest concern for people during the end of days. I told you once that we should get pizza and move some furniture around. Hope a rabbit and a squirrel and some rat is a good enough dinner.”

Castiel returns her smile. “I believe it is.”

.

She doesn’t tell him that she loves him, of course, and he doesn’t tell her. She thinks he’s known for a while, ever since she willingly sat down in that church to let Sam turn her human and give her a new soul. She’s known since the hospital that Castiel has feelings for her, back when he talked to bees and plants and told her that her demonic form was beautiful.

She could feel, even as a demon. It pains her to admit that, sometimes.

But she knows that it’s useless to spout crap like that during the apocalypse, that it helps no one. Survival is the focus, not feelings.

Still, she does not pull away when Castiel holds her hand or kisses her cheek or offers her the choices cuts of meat from their kills. She appreciates the little things, blames it on her newfound humanity, and tries to keep going. She tries to teach Castiel to shoot the bow, and when he fails at that, she teaches him to track. That, it seems, he can do, and do well.

Between the two of them, they never go hungry. Winter beings to ebb away, giving birth to spring. They pick all the greens they can, eat dandelions as they walk and talk about their lives before. She tells him of her first time on Earth after the pit, of taking some farm girl somewhere in Europe and having to adjust to being topside again. She tells him how the colors had been so bright that they nearly hurt her eyes, and the sun blinding after so many years in the muted, decaying place that is Hell.

In return Castiel tells her about Heaven, tells her about watching humanity struggle to survive and how they slowly formed villages and learned to build things and work together to make a better life.

“We’ll have that, one day,” he tells her. “We’re human now. We can make a choice to keep living like this, just to survive, or to actually live. To participate. To use our free will.”

For once, Meg doesn’t argue with him. She doesn’t want to tell him that it’s useless to get his hopes up. The closer they get to Kansas, the more zombies there are, swarming the roads and forests and streams. She does not have the heart to tell him that the Winchesters probably didn’t stay in the bunker, that they probably ran out to help and got caught in the pandemic and are, most likely, dead and walking.

.

They’re almost there, Meg thinks, but in reality, she has no idea where they are. Every damn forest in the United States looks the same to her.

“We should’ve headed for the coast. Found an island,” Meg says. “Spent the rest of our lives fishing, if we didn’t die at sea.”

“We could ask Sam and Dean if they want to do that,” Castiel says. They keep their voices to a whisper, lest they attract something. Castiel walks in front of her, machete raised. Meg pops kibble into her mouth and chews as they walk, holding her bow in her other hand, just in case.

Castiel opens his mouth to speak when a low moan sounds from somewhere in the trees. Meg notches an arrow and Castiel raises his machete, both of them ready for the zombie about to walk out of the woods.

Neither are prepared for the dragger that crawls out of a pile of decaying leaves, wraps itself around Castiel’s leg, and digs its teeth into his ankle.

Castiel screams and aims his machete downward. A chorus of moans answers him. Meg curses, aims her arrow at the dragger, and prepares to shoot even though she knows that Castiel is a goner. He’s bitten, he’s bitten and there’s nothing she can do but kill him like she promised.

She aims her arrow for his head instead, intending on giving him a quick death, but a zombie grabs her from behind. She whirls around and shoves her arrow through the zombie’s eye socket. Castiel screams again, and Meg answers with one of her own.

She turns back around just in time to see Castiel, flat on his back in the dirt and leaves, taking a zombie bite to the neck.

Without thinking, she draws her second gun, aims, and fires. She knows the noise will attract more zombies, but she doesn’t care. She has to get them out. A zombie grabs the quiver of arrows on her back and tugs, trying to pull her down. Meg slips them off her shoulders and throws the bow to the forest floor.

She grabs Castiel, hauls him to his feet, and tugs him after her as she flees. He has to lean on her shoulder for support, limping the entire way as she tries to think of somewhere to go. He’s too injured to climb a tree, too injured to do anything but limp alongside her and pray. He does, and loudly, until Meg hisses at him to shut up and keep moving.

“You should leave me,” he tells her. “I’m bit.”

“I told you I was gonna take care of you,” Meg says. “I will. Now _move.”_

Castiel doesn’t argue, limping by her side as they move frantically through the trees. The gunshots and their screams have attracted a sizeable hoard, each one moaning loudly as it moves toward its lunch. Meg stops caring about making noise, knowing that they’re done for, anyway, and reaches back to finger the Walther in her belt.

Inexplicably, the James Bond theme comes to her head, and she barks a laugh.

“We’re _fucked,”_ she says. “I told you that you were gonna be the death of me.”

“You should leave me. You might still be able to get away,” Castiel says. “I dropped by my gun.”

“There’s too many!” Meg shouts. She grabs her other gun from where she’d shoved it back into her waistband and keeps it out. It’s bigger than the Walther, and almost too heavy for her to hold with one hand. She notices that Castiel’s machete is gone, too. There are six bullets left in her Beretta, and two in the Walther. After that, they’ll be down to her hatchet.

But she will not use the Walther. Those bullets are special, and they will be needed soon.

It’s hard to aim and shoot one handed. The gun hurts her hand when she fires, taking down zombies that get in front of them. There are too many them around to care about the noise any longer. They’re screwed no matter what they do.

“There!” Castiel says, pointing. Meg turns her head and spots a cabin. The windows are boarded shut, but the door hangs wide open. The two of them scramble toward the open door, Meg shooting the zombie that stumbles out of the cabin and onto the small porch. She pulls Castiel over the body and through the door, stopping only to shoot two draggers making their way out of the back bedroom, using the last of the bullets in her Beretta.

She drops Castiel and the gun together, depositing both of them on the filthy, frayed carpet in the middle of the room. The cabin is small, probably used as a temporary hunting spot. The furniture is sparse, threadbare, and covered in a solid layer of dust. Old ashes stain the fireplace, where a picture of daisies hangs above it, tilted to the side.

Meg quickly shuts the door and bolts it, dragging a squat bookcase in front of it for extra measure before she circles to check the rest of the cabin. There are two doors, one leading to a bathroom and the other leading to a bedroom with a bare window. She slams both doors shut, locks them, and puts chairs under them just in case.

The dead immediately surround the cabin, pounding on the walls from all directions. Fingers break through the gaps in the wood, grasping at her. Meg draws her Walther, clicks the safety off, and keeps her finger firmly on the trigger. She turns away from the windows and paces back and forth, mind racing. There has to be a way out of it, has to be away to keep the infection from getting hold in Castiel. If it was just his leg, she could amputate, and pray that she can keep both the zombie infection and real infection at bay. But with his neck…

“God fucking _dammit!”_ she screeches, kicking an ugly, green armchair in frustration.

“Meg, you promised,” Castiel moans from the floor. She ignores him and circles the room, running through scenarios in her head. None of them end well.

“Is it really a sin?” Meg demands.

“What?” Castiel asks dumbly.

“Suicide,” she says bluntly. She stops circling the room and looks directly at him. “If I shoot myself in the head, will it send me back to Hell?”

“God sees and forgives all,” Castiel tells her.

“That’s not an answer,” Meg snaps. The dead pound at the door and walls of the cabin, their moans deafening. Her heart beats rabbit-quick, pounding against her ribcage. All those years as a predator and here she is, running and hiding and trapped like prey. She cannot let herself be torn apart by zombies, screaming as she is eaten alive, but she cannot go back to Hell, back to the endless torture and pain and Crowley.

Castiel keeps his hand pressed to the ragged wound of his neck. Meg watches blood seep through his fingers, her own finger twitching on the trigger on her gun.

“Well,” she insists, “is it?”

“God sees all,” Castiel repeats. “He forgives all.”

“So, what? Do I do a preemptive confession? Bless me father, for I have sinned, it’s been, oh, my entire fucking life since my last confession?”

Castiel shakes his head slightly. “He’ll see why you did it.”

Meg feels like she should probably relax at that, but her heart still beats frantically and her palms still moisten with sweat, making the gun slip in her hands. There are only two bullets left, and more zombies than she can take alone. Castiel is bitten, living on borrowed time as his blood drips sluggishly from his neck and ankle and the virus takes hold, and essentially useless. She knows she should’ve left him behind and climbed a tree, waited for the undead hoard to pass after they tore him apart.

But, damn her newly human sensibilities and feelings, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t break her promise.

The dead pound against the door, rattling the wood in its frame. The chain will not hold long, she knows, and the zombies will be on them, tearing the flesh from their bones.

“You could run,” Castiel suggests. “I could go out there and distract them. You could get away.”

“You couldn’t even walk here on your own,” Meg snaps. “You wouldn’t get three feet before they were on you, and you’re not a big enough meal for all of them.”

He lowers his eyes because he knows she’s right. Absurdly, Meg feels tears well in her eyes. She hastily wipes them away, takes a deep breath, and goes to crouch next to him, grateful that her hands are steady.

“Promise me,” she snarls. “Promise me that it won’t send me back to Hell.”

“I promise,” he says. “Your soul’s so new. There’s no stain on it.”

Meg swallows hard. Her soul. Her stupid, shiny, brandy-new human soul. The whole reason they’re all in this mess.

She stands, raises her gun, and points it down at Castiel. He smiles at her, the bastard.

“See you in a minute,” he says.

“See you in a minute,” Meg agrees, and pulls the trigger. The gunshot is absurdly loud in the cabin. The noise sets off a fresh wave of moaning from the dead outside. Meg doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away as Castiel’s blood and brain matter soaks into the filthy rug.

Distantly, she hears glass smash somewhere, and figures that the zombies have broken a window in some other room of the cabin. Meg ignores it and raises the gun to her head and squeezes her eyes shut, breathing ragged. More tears spring to her eyes, and a sob escapes her throat. She lowers the gun, takes in a harsh, deep breath, and blinks away the tears.

She turns away from Castiel’s broken body and focuses on the painting hanging on the far wall. It’s crooked, ready to fall from the nail holding it, and faded. But the daises stand out, white and perfect.

_Innocence and purity,_ she remembers. She’d learned flower language, a long time ago, back when she lived in Victorian England and dreamed of Lucifer rising and cleansing the Earth of humans.

It’s almost enough to make her laugh.

More moaning reaches her ears. The door to the back bedroom rattles. The chair under the knob begins to slip. 

Meg keeps her eyes focused on the wildflowers, raises the gun to her head, takes one last, deep breath, and pulls the trigger.


End file.
